Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

Jennifer Otter Bickerdike is a media and music academic, specializing in fandom, the cult of dead celebrity, pop culture and music, specifically Joy Division, post-punk, soft rock and the Golden Age of Hip-Hop. She has written and presented extensively on fandom and media.

Music experience and early academic career

Otter Bickerdike was raised in Santa Cruz, California, where she established an interest for the ocean, conservation, swimming, surfing and music. While working to complete her BA in American Studies at the University of California, Davis, Otter Bickerdike landed her first position in the industry, with a College Music Representative job with Sony Music. Before graduating with her undergraduate degree, she went on to intern at a variety of record companies, including Sony Music, MCA Records and Universal Music and Video Distribution before becoming the West Coast Marketing Director for Interscope Geffen A&M Records aged 25.^[1] She toured with and devised marketing and branding campaigns for acts including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Dr. Dre, Gwen Stefani, U2 and Eminem, before leaving to start her own consulting company, working with a wide array of creative and technology industry, such as Facebook, Music for America, Fuzz, Adeline Records and L.A.M.B.^[2] She concurrently taught at and gained her MA in Humanities from San Francisco State University.

After friend Hunter McPherson was murdered in San Francisco, Jennifer decided to quit her job, sell everything she owned and fulfil a life long dream of living in England.^[1] Her story of transformation was featured in the New York Times best-selling author Marlo Thomas’s book, It Ain’t Over ‘Till Its Over.

After moving to London, Otter Bickerdike enrolled in Goldsmiths University of London, where she completed her PhD in Cultural Studies. She joined the University of East London as a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Art and Cultural Management from 2012-2015,^[3] when she took the role of Senior Lecturer Senior Lecturer and Program Leader in Music and Branding at Buckinghamshire New University.^[2]

Publications

Otter Bickerdike has released several books about fan culture, including:

• Fandom, Image and Authenticity: Joy Devotion and the Second Lives of Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) ISBN 9781137393524
• The Secular Religion of Fandom (Sage, 2015)
• Joy Devotion: The Importance of Ian Curtis and Fan Culture (forthcoming, 2016) Headpress, ISBN 9781909394285

Media appearances and awards

Otter Bickerdike is asked to speak regularly at conferences and public lectures around the world on various aspects of music and media, from symposiums on branding and promotion to talks on the cultural history of the 27 Club. She has spoken at a range of institutions including Google, Goldsmiths University of London, the Annual Association of Event Management Education,^[4] Experience Music Project Seattle, San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival,^[5] XOYO and the BBC, on areas as diverse as the rise of celebrity culture, the tragic gothic heroine, and dark tourism. She was also featured as an expert on pop music and culture in the 2014 Channel 4 Christmas Day documentary Frozen at Christmas,^[6] as well as on Absolute Radio’s 2013 30 Years of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance.^[7]

In 2013, she won the Student Led Teaching award for Most Innovative Lecturer^[3] and was short listed for the same accolade on a national level by the Times Higher Education.^[8]

Currently Otter Bickerdike is working on two writing projects - one about why vinyl matters and the other about yacht rock.

References